Thinking of You
Despite myself and what I know to be right, I find myself comparing, and it's you. Never was a contest, never will be a contest. Once you taste perfection, there's no going back or forgetting. When you asked, I tried to find another, and eventually I did, but I still wish it was you who held me at night.
I never saw you that way. I never told you that, mainly because you just assumed I, like every other girl in the world, saw you that way. The thought hadn't occurred to me, who loved perfection and thrived only if things went right. To like you, someone who could hardly even manage to put his t-shirt on facing the right way? I thought it impossible. Then one day you approached me in a different way than you had before. It wasn't band business, it was just you talking to me. You told me about this place you used to go when you were little, before the band and before Horace Prep. Before your mother divorced your father who then married the nanny. You told me all about those days, you, your mother, and your father, driving hours until you reached it, The Apple Grove. You would spend the afternoon, a family enjoy the summer and the smell of the apples. You told me all of this your eyes sparkling as blue as the sky in an Indian summer, and suddenly, I saw you that way.
Our last date, we went apple picking. The field was hours away and you talked incessantly and fiddled with the radio like always, and I listened to both your talking and whatever station you chose, like always. I tilted my head towards the sun peeking through the sunroof and made waves with my hands in the wind. I watched your hands make drum patterns on the steering wheel and your blond hair fall into your eyes each time the wind caught it. You bit your lip and settled on a radio station way earlier than usual. I could sense you were nervous, and I noticed you until you noticed me and settled your right hand by placing it in mine. I never saw you that way, but as soon as I did, I never wanted to see you any other way.
Hours later, the sun was fading fast from the sky and my skin was cooling, except for where you touched me and it ignited as if it were being set on fire. Our baskets sat forgotten, half full of the apples we had spent all day picking, only to be discarded with little thought in exchange for sitting on the banks of a nearby river. Our toes dipped in the water and absentmindedly you drummed a rhythm on my palm and traced the lines on my hands. I thought of the future, or at least of what I hoped the future to look like. I longed to see a beautiful brick house with a "SOLD" sign sitting out front, us standing together, arms around each other. I imagined babies, blond hair, brown eyes, or brown hair, blue eyes. Mostly, I just longed for you.
It was then I noticed you had stopped tracing my hand, stopped drumming, but our world continued to swirl in front of my eyes. I relished the thought that it was all ours, ours forever and always, an eternity together. I thought it was hard to misinterpret "eternity" but apparently it's not as difficult as I once thought. To some, eternity can mean hardly any time at all, a blink and you'll miss it kind of thing. Blink and it's over and our entire world, my entire world smashes into thousands of tiny shards of glass that cut through my body at the slightest movement. I laid perfectly still, pretending I hadn't heard, pretending my body wasn't aching from the glass, from the glass that until ten seconds ago had made up our world. You repeated my name over and over, kept whispering it, making it seem real, and for the first time since I had known you, you cried. You're just a little boy, a little boy who cries, you can't fight in a war.
Suddenly I sat up, so quick I became dizzy, dizzy from the movements but mostly from the pain your words brought me. You enlisted in the army to pay for college, to pay for you to go to music school, to make your dreams come true, you weren't supposed to go anywhere. Weren't supposed to need it. I told you all of this, I yelled all of this, but you just sat there, your hand that previously held mine sitting limp in your lap as tears rolled down your cheeks.
You whispered you couldn't find the strength to tell me sooner, that you were leaving the next morning and then I cried. I cried for you, and for me, and for the babies and the brick house. My heart ached as the pieces of our world dug deeper and deeper in, drawing blood I would happily have shed anyway if it meant you would be safe.
We were more in love than I thought possible, especially for two people who never even saw each other that way. And then you were breaking up with me. No, not just me, you were breaking up with the babies, and the house, breaking up with our future. Where do I go from here?
I told you I would wait for you. Didn't you hear me? Damnit, I told you I could wait forever, with out toes dipped into that river, our apple baskets laid forgotten and I gave you my forever. It was yours, but you took your toes from the river and picked the biggest apple from your basket, bit into it and refused my forever.
Instead, you told me all about your forever, which had nothing to do with me. It was all about "honor" and "serving my country" and you didn't see it. You didn't see that your forever was all destruction and death when I was offering you mine, my love. You said I needed someone better, and told me all about the fish in the sea. You told me you could try, but I needed someone more like him. You actually told me I deserved someone like him, who I have now. But I picked you.
I picked you the way you picked that apple from my pile. I can't cast you away like it never happened. You can't tell me to move on. I chose you and you're mine. Or at least you were, until you became Property of the United States Army.
Then you were gone. And you were right, and he wasn't. His brown hair fell into his brown eyes, he played the air guitar as a nervous habit and my skin never caught fire at his touch. That's where I went. You said move on, I said where do I go?
I guess missing you is all I will ever know. Laying in bed at night, his arms encircling me, his eyes staring into mine, begging to feel that closeness you and I felt. He doesn't know that when I look into his chocolate eyes, I'm searching for a hint of your special blue that reminds me of summer.
His heat is broken and the cold is almost unbearable but he seems to find it as an excuse to hold me closer. I feel sick with myself as I imagine you holding me, your blue summer eyes warming me, melting the winter's ice. My stomach twists itself into knots as he whispers he loves me, and my heart aches as I whisper it back. He kisses down my neck, making a path to my lips which he in turn kisses. I taste the apples from that last day on my mouth.
Our last day together.
I never believed you that I would find anyone better, but I managed. He was right there, all along, waiting. He's everything you aren't. Or at least everything you weren't. He calls when he promises he will, he remembers my birthday, he buys me flowers on our anniversary and leaves me alone on yours. I got better after having the best, but I still want the best, still long for you. You and I both know it, and every second of everyday I'm thinking of you, regretting. I regret it because I lay in his arms every night, my back pressed close to his chest and wait for you. Not just wait for you in general, but wait for you to bust down the door and take me away.
Of course, that couldn't ever happen, because of what did happen. I have a boyfriend, and he and I went together, to your funeral. That couldn't happen because nineteen months ago, I stood in front of your casket, the summer breeze making waves with my hair and I said goodbye. You died fighting in a war you never believed in, and my heart went with you. I said goodbye to the brick house, and the babies, and eternity, but I never said goodbye to you. Because you're still the one spending the night in my eyes, still busting down the door and taking me away, no more mistakes. And if it's alright with you, it's in your eyes that I'd still like to stay.
A/N So, this is a songfic-ish to Katy Perry's Thinking Of You. If you haven't heard the song, I seriously recommend it, even if you're not into pop music, there's no denying Katy Perry. Some of the lines from the song I took directly to make the story, but I mostly used it as a basic outline. And what's really strange is as I listened to this song I go this idea…and then I saw the music video and our ideas were pretty much the same. So when I saw that, I tried to change around my idea, but it just didn't feel right, to me it felt like this was the story that needed to be told.
And obviously, I don't come right out and say who this story is about, but I'm hoping I made it easy to guess? I'll give a hint that Summer is narrating and I'll give a million dollars to whoever guesses the rest first! (:
When I read this over, I feel like it's been so long since I've written fanfiction, and maybe I'm trying to hard to make it feel right again? But I'm happy with the results, and if you are too (or if you're not) please review! And thanks for readinggg! Oh, and please excuse any spelling/grammar mistakes because for a girl who wants to be a writer? Yeah, I'm pretty much crap at it. And I'm always anxious to get the story up and am so boreddd with trying to pick out the excuses. Oh, and I'm LAZY.